Best of 2024
30. 12. 2024 | Rubriky: Articles,Best of Year
[Ken Hunt, London] 2023 into 2024 felt like bursting smiling into sunshine after being under one of the darkest clouds imaginable. In July 2024 I went back to the Rudolstadt Festival. The 2023 Festival had been really important. Santosh and I arrived there a month after being discharged from hospital and six weeks after major surgery. I guess I really needed to get there. I finished dressing and sterilising my operation wound in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg was the first Kiez (‘neighbourhood’) of Berlin where I felt totally at home in and I first visited West Berlin in 1970. Kreuzberg is the first multicultural district of Berlin I’ve encountered and I’ve been going there since the 1990s.
The 2024 Festival was immeasurably better. Shit journey from Prague with delays and missed trains. Thanks for nothing, Deutsche Bahn. We checked in at the festival office and hotel and bee-lined straight to Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt’s concert at the Stadtkirche (‘town church’).
This year, again, Peter Uhlmann (1950-2018), one of the co-founders of the festival was on my mind. I met him in July 1991, the first year of the festival. He and I got a chance to talk deep and heavy in July 2018. This year his wife Christine and I left the others and walked together to the English elm planted in his memory in the Heinepark. Peter was responsible for the festival’s street music component. Name another festival programming street music. In 1991 Peter focussed my head. Ever after I have paid more attention to street entertainers and buskers. And have dropped coin into hats. The doyen of Cologne’s street musicians, Klaus der Geiger came back in 2024. Naturally, he figures in my Germany chapter in the third edition of the Rough Guide to World Music. If there was one mention of a street musicians in any other chapter in any other volume, I never spotted it. I saw Klaus der Geiger performing in the grounds of the Schillerhaus where Goethe and Schiller supposedly first met.
Anyway, Deutsche Bahn and České dráhy, between them, wrecked returning to Prague by train. Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt graciously gave us a lift back to Prague. It was a journey filled with talk about Czechoslovak literature, Moravian music, cabbages and kings. Toni got so wrapped up in talk about Kafka and Hašek that he decided to stay in Prague and heard back to Brno by coach. We ate at what I like to call my Prague office, U Zavěšenýho Kafe on Loretánská (formerly Úvoz at the bottom of the hill) Then we took the 22 down to the Franz Kafka Museum. Toni helped me with something bothering me for the Martin Carthy biography. (The work progresses.) I also brought Reiner Stach’s three-volume German-language biography of Kafka back from the festival, thanks to Bernhard Hanneken.
2024 saw me return to reviewing music from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. To be honest, post-Covid and post-Brexit, most of my outlets had gone. I came out of retirement for Aruna Sairam’s recital at the Darbar Festival at the Barbican Centre on Sunday, 17 October 2024. And she sang magnificently. Pulse commissioned me to review the concert. I thank them enormously. After the concert we talked at length.
The prospect of one side-commission for 2025 is already exciting me enormously. It would take a great deal to divert me from the Martin Carthy biography. It is special – which is all I can say right now.
New releases aka Playlist 
Laurie Anderson / Amelia / Nonesuch Records www.nonesuch.com
Jon Boden & The Remnant Kings / Parlour Ballads / Hudson Records https://hudsonrecords.co.uk
Nikol Bóková Trio / Feathers / Soleil et Pluie www.soleiletpluie.com
Johnny Campbell / True North / (Own Label) Bandcamp https://johnnycampbell.bandcamp.com/
Hlaskontrabas Oktet / Kaleidoscapes / Animal Music https://animalmusic.cz/en
Lankum / Live in Dublin / https://www.roughtrade.com
MichaelAnnJillo / I’ll Give You One More As You Go / Rezound [No website information from Contact michaelannjillocd@gmail.com with details of your address for PayPal information.]
Angeline Morrison / Ophelia / (Own Label) https://angelinemorrisonmusic.bandcamp.com
Mucha Quartet / Štyria hudci/Four Fellow Musicians / Pavian Records www.drhorak.sk
Rachel Newton / Sealladh / Hudson Records https://hudsonrecords.co.uk
Silk Road Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens /American Railroad / Nonesuch Records www.nonesuch.com
Martin Simpson / Skydancers / Topic Records www.topicrecords.co.uk
Seb Stone / Young Tamlyn’s Away / Scribe Records www.scriberecords.co.uk and www.sebstonefolk.co.uk
Linda Thompson / Proxy Music / Storysound Records http://storysoundrecords.com/
Richard Thompson / Ship To Shore / New West Records https://newwestrecords.com/
Macdara Yeates / Traditional Singing from Dublin / Bandcamp https://macdarayeates.bandcamp.com
Historic releases, reissues and anthologies
Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble / Peggy’s Dream / 251 Records
Richard Thompson Band / Historic Classic Concert – Live in Nottingham 1986 / The Store For Music www.thestoreformusic.com
Emil Viklický / Za horama, za lesama. Beyond The Mountains, Beyond The Words / Supraphon Music Publishing www.supraphon.com / or available from https://cdmusic.cz/inshop/scripts/search.aspx?q=Za+Horama%2C+Zu+L esama
Events of 2024
Angrusori, featuring Nils Henrik Asheim and Iva Bittová / Grand Junction, St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Paddington / 17 January 2024
Iva Bittová and Antonín Fajt / Stadtkirche, Rudolstadt Festival / 5 July 2024
Klaus der Geiger / Schillerhaus, Rudolstadt Festival / 6 July 2024
Iva Bittová and the Mucha Quartet / Stadtkirche, Rudolstadt Festival / 7 July 2024
Leon Rosselson’s 90th Birthday Bash, The Studio, The Questors Theatre, Ealing / 28 July 2024
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / TwickFolk, The Cabbage Patch, Twickenham / 29 September 2024
http://www.pulseconnects.com/aruna-sairam-darbar-festival
June Tabor and The Oysterband / Barbican Centre, London / 20 October 2024
Aruna Sairam / Darbar Festival, Barbican Centre, London / 27 October 2024
Nikol Bóková Quartet / Spice Jazz Soho, EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 / 28th Made in Prague Festival, The Crazy Coqs, Brasserie Zédel, Soho / 18 November 2024
Hamilton : An American Musical / Victoria Palace Theatre, London / 23 November 2024
Ten music projects released before 2024. Some new discoveries, some catching up, some revisitings, some music returned to for inspiration and entertaiment.
Angrusori / Live at Tou / Hudson Records, 2020
Nikol Bóková / Expedition / Soleil et Pluie, 2023 www.soleiletpluie.com
Jackson Browne / For Everyman / Elektra/Asylum, 1973
Burd Ellen / Says the never beyond / [own label], 2020, www.burdellen.com
Jerry Garcia All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions / Jerry Garcia Estate and Warners, 2004 out-of-print
Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / An Evening With Nancy Kerr & James Fagan / Little Dish, 2019
Joseph Spence and The Pinder Family / The Spring of Sixty-Five / Rounder, 1992
Škampa Quartet / Kaprál Kaprálová Martinů String Quartets / Radioservis, 2012 www.radioteka.cz
Various / Proměny v čase: Tradiční lidová hudba na Moravě ve 20. století / Transitions in Time – Traditional Folk Music in Moravia in 20th Century / Gnosis, 2001
Top to bottom: Aruna Sairam at the Darbar Festival, 17 October 2024; unknown 6-string amplified zither musician playing dub and reggae at Clapham Junction on 19 December 2024; Angeline Morrison at Cecil Sharp House on 20 October 2022; Iva Bittová with Angrusori on 17 January 2024; David Dorůžka with the Nikol Bóková Quartet on 18 November 2024.
All photos © 2024 Santosh Dass/Swing 51 Archives (Aruna Sairam) or © 2024 Ken Hunt/Swing 51 Archives.